"Though She Be But Little, She is Fierce"...That She Was-Thank You Ruth Bader Ginsburg

"We should not be held back from pursuing our full talents, from contributing what we could contribute to society, because we fit into a certain mold––because we belong to a group that historically has been the object of discrimination."  

 Had she never been nominated to the highest court Ruth Bader Ginsburg would certainly be remembered as a single indomitable force who dedicated her life to championing women's fight for equality, and society's road toward equal justice.  At every point in her life she was pushed on closed doors in her quiet, often shy, demeanor which left many having never seen her coming! She left an unparalleled legacy of justice and equality with groundbreaking cases that changed the legal landscape and this country. She is responsible for changing women's legal rights and access, but Ruth Bader Ginsburg did so much more, for every woman, for every little girl, for everyone who has ever been told-"sorry, this isn't your door" she blazed a trail in her demure yet tough as nails  way- “Women belong,” she said, “ in all places where decisions are being made. It shouldn’t be that women are the exception.” and she dedicated her work and her life to ensuring just that.

 

“My mother told me to be a lady. And for her, that meant be your own person, be independent.” 

 

 Her own biography is ground breaking.  She entered Cornell on full scholarship at the age of 17 after the tragic loss of her Mom. It was at Cornell that she would meet her beloved Marty  "What made Marty so overwhelmingly attractive to me was that he cared that I had a brain," she said.  After college she could not find a job except as typist and when she entered Harvard Law, one of only 9 women in her class of 500,  the dean of Harvard Law would bring these 9 women together and ask them outright why they thought it was OK to be taking the place that should be held by a man. She would follow Marty to Columbia Law graduating top of her class but finding she could not get a job. The doors to law firms were closed to a woman, no matter how brilliant or how many recommendations she came with.  In 1963 she finally landed a job teaching at Rutgers Law and hiding her second pregnancy by wearing oversized clothes so no one would know she was pregnant and could hold her job. She would begin her fight for equal justice at Rutgers and go on to try cases of discrimination at the supreme court. She would become the first female tenured professor at Columbia Law and became the voice and the designer of the battle for women's legal rights with one goal-to win! 

 "The words of the 14th Amendment's equal protection clause — 'nor shall any state deny to any person the equal protection of the laws.' Well that word, 'any person,' covers women as well as men. And the Supreme Court woke up to that reality in 1971," Ginsburg said.

 “Fight for the things that you care about,but do it in a way that will lead others to join you.”

 In 1980 President Jimmy Carter nominated her  to the D.C. District court of appeals and in 1993 President Clinton nominated her to the supreme court-the second woman to be be nominated  She was not his first choice but upon meeting with her he was sold falling for her "hook, link and sinker" and she was confirmed by the senate on a 96-3 vote.

 

“I pray that I may be all that [my mother] would have been had she lived in an age when women could aspire and achieve and daughters are cherished as much as sons.”

Ruth Bader Ginsburg fought in every corner of her life with a steely determination. She said that starting out she had three strikes against her-she was Jewish, a Woman , and a Mother-all of which meant doors that swung open for men with far less ability were not even available to be seen for her.  Cancer would be an incessant presence throughout, from her Mother, to her cherished Marty, to her own numerous private battles... but nothing, not even cancer, stopped her-she worked and battled through pain and loss with a laced glove iron hand and will. She found great joy in her Notorious RBG fame and how amazing that so many little girls would have such an icon to emulate. In her first ever case as a Supreme Court justice she showed she was not there to just fill a chair but would continue her fight for equality.

"Sex, like race, is a visible, immutable characteristic bearing no necessary relationship to ability.

Sex, like race, has been made the basis for unjustified or at least unproved assumptions, concerning an individual’s potential to perform or to contribute to society…

These distinctions have a common effect: They help keep woman in her place, a place inferior to that occupied by men in our society."

In conclusion Justice Ginsburg quoted Sara Grimke:

"I ask no favor for my sex.  All I ask of our brethren is that they take their feet off our necks."

 She showed that it simply didn't matter that you were born a woman-gender was irrelevant and she worked to ensure that justice for everyone would be secure.

 

  "Yet, dare we be at ease? We are part of a world whose unity has been almost completely shattered. No one can feel free from danger and destruction until the many torn threads of civilization are bound together again. We cannot feel safer until every nation, regardless of weapons or power, will meet together in good faith, the people worthy of mutual association."

"I do think that I was born under a very bright star...When you think about — the world has changed really in what women are doing. I went to law school when women were less than 3% of lawyers in the country; today, they are 50%. I never had a woman teacher in college or in law school. The changes have been enormous. And they've just — they've gone much too far [to be] going back." 

She left us at the worst time possible, just weeks before the election with time to fill her seat in a lame duck republican session. Her death on the Jewish New Year, on the Sabbath as well. means she is considered a Tzaddik, a person of great righteousness. NPR reporter Nina Totenberg, a dear friend of Justice Ginsburg, wrote on Twitter: "A Jewish teaching says those who die just before the Jewish new year are the ones God has held back until the last moment because they were needed most and were the most righteous." Yet, it is as if she was denied a New Year, and all of us another year of her incomparable gifts and presence.   In the Jewish tradition when someone dies you say "May their memory be a blessing"...for Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg her life was that for us all and her loss is palpable. She simply changed how society is for American women, full stop. She was a revolutionary at every step of her life who created a revolution, so may her memory be just that, a revolution that fulfills her last wish and in her death may she blaze one last irrevocable trail again for us all. Thank You Justice Ginsburg.

"My most fervent wish is that I will not be replaced until a new president is installed." ~Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg

Tell' Em to Get Their Own Coffee

Welcome Back #MurphyBrown! We need you!! On my office wall hangs this 👇 from an ad for the original Murphy Brown  series. I  tore  it out and hung it on my fridge and it has hung on every office wall and fridge I have had for almost 30 years. Murphy Brown took no prisoners and suffered no fools...she told them all and showed them all! Today it may feel we have not budged one inch forward since Murphy, but glad she is back so a new generation of girls and women can laugh and learn...Thank you #CandiceBergen #DianeEnglish#TheFutureisFemale#Tellemtogettheirowncoffee#AlwaysAcceptCashmere"Ask Tough Questions
Risk Failure
Look Beneath the Surface
Avoid Bowties
Go Against the Grain
Trust Your Instincts
Buck Trends
Wear Black to the Office
Make Waves
Fight Gravity
Tell 'em to Get Their Own Coffee
Rock the Boat
View Pantyhose as Optional June-August
Puncture the Pompous
Don't Answer to Honey
Wear Leather to Big Meetings
Be Vocal
Get Even
Act Silly Occasionally
Remember Rock 'n Roll is Therapy
When in Doubt Wear Heels
Radiate Intelligence
Hold Out
Don't Date Men with Pinky Rings
Demand Equality
Always Accept Cashmere"

R.E.S.P.E.C.T!

Photographed by Wayne Maser, Vogue, March 1988 via

“It’s important for people. Not just me or the civil rights movement or women—it’s important to people. And I was asked what recording of mine I’d put in a time capsule, and it is ‘Respect.’ Because people want respect—even small children, even babies. As people, we deserve respect from one another...” Aretha Franklin on "Respect"

In a world of imitation, knock-offs and banality, there was, and always will be an oasis.  A singular voice that no one can imitate, from a woman who defined Diva, a drop your mink as you go Diva,who could and did, sing any wannabe Diva into the next century. When she sang you stopped, you pulled over, you tuned everything and everyone out because Aretha was singing!  R.E.S.P.E.C.T ...and everyone did.

She would be our soundtrack whenever we needed that voice, the voice that became the anthem for power, strength and pride... and oh what a voice! overflowing Heart and pouring Soul!  Listen-The Queen! is singing.

If you need to smile, if you need to dance, if you need to find strength, if you need to feel like you can rule the world, if you need to put the top down in your car and sing your lungs out, or if you just need to hear the best there ever was, or ever could be...Aretha! 

 I will forever regret that I never saw her perform live but I have four favorite performances:

*Murphy Brown and Aretha sing "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" 1991

* "Nessun Dorma" Filling in for Pavoratti at the Grammys in 1998 

*"My Country 'tis of Thee" at Barack Obama's 2009  Inauguration

*...and the Forever performance that brought Barack Obama,and me, to tears- "(You Make Me Feel Like) A Natural Woman" at The Kennedy Center Honors for Carole King who wrote the signature song for Aretha--and Aretha sang it for us all!

GO Watch Now! Turn the Volume WAY Up and thank the Queen!

 “Nobody embodies more fully the connection between the African-American spiritual, the blues, R. & B., rock and roll—the way that hardship and sorrow were transformed into something full of beauty and vitality and hope... American history wells up when Aretha sings." Barack Obama

You Gotta Have Style-Diana Vreeland's Eye

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“There’s only one very good life and that’s the life you know 
you want and you make it yourself,” 

For as long as I can remember I have inhaled fashion magazines.  At 5'1" on a good day I never had great expectations of wearing many of the clothes I saw in Harper's Bazaar or Vogue...but that wasn't really the point, the clothes were only a part of the reason that each month I curled up with the magazines.  The reason I looked forward to turning the pages was the opportunity to inhabit worlds that only existed in the minds of the most talented designers and photographers and editors-worlds that in most cases just allowed the clothes to play a role.  I can't say that about any magazine today.  In fact it is very hard to distinguish one magazine from the next and one issue from the last and magazines are simply not as much fun for me as they once were.  The magic of fashion magazine editorial stories, and the magazine's greatness, existed because of one woman-Diana Vreeland.

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"Style - all who have it share one thing: originality"
 
 Diana Vreeland sitting in front of her famous portrait by William Acton

 

 Watching the recent documentary Diana Vreeland The Eye has to Travel- by her Granddaughter in-law Lisa Immordino Vreeland, I was once again enchanted by the force of nature that was Diana Vreeland.  She influenced the fashion world for over fifty years as fashion editor at Harper's Bazaar, Editor at Vogue and Director of the Costume Institute at The Metropolitan Museum in New York. 

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 "You don't have to be born beautiful to be wildly attractive."

 Mrs. Vreeland came of age in the roaring Twenties, a time and an age of enormous change for women and women's fashion-led of course by Coco Chanel who saw that women would require clothes that allowed them to move and travel and work.  "The world was alive with everything" and Mrs. Vreeland would carry that youthful exuberance, energy and thirst for new and exciting throughout her life.  She began by opening a lingerie business attracting clients such as Wallis Simpson-"my little lingerie shop bought down the throne"

 “You don’t owe prettiness to anyone. Not to your boyfriend/spouse/partner, not to your co-workers, especially not to random men on the street. You don’t owe it to your mother, you don’t owe it to your children, you don’t owe it to civilization in general. Prettiness is not a rent you pay for occupying a space marked ‘female’.” 

Growing up her Mother told her she was an Ugly Duckling-she was never a beauty but she invented herself with a look that was distinctively her own-pitch black hair, bright red lips and nails, rouged cheeks... and became the center of any room she entered.  Perhaps because of her Mother's disdain for her looks Mrs. Vreeland brought non-traditional beauty to the pages of her magazines and turned models into celebrities and celebrities into models.  She had an eye for unusual style seeing what a camera would reveal and discovered and made icons of the the likes of Lauren Bacall, Angelica Huston, China Machado, Veruschka, Marisa Berenson, Penelope, Lauren Hutton, Twiggy...she pushed the flaws and  faults and celebrated imperfection as she did with an editorial spread on Barbra Streisand emphasizing  Streisand's famous nose. 

  Harper’s Bazaar, February 1960 photographer: Richard Avedon

“Fashion is part of the daily air and it changes all the time, with all the events. You can even see the approaching of a revolution in clothes. 

 You can see and feel everything in clothes.”

Before Diana Vreeland fashion magazines were filled with posed models and articles on how to bake a cake.  Mrs.Vreeland tossed all of that.  She was in fact a modern working woman, but she was also a visionary. She was creative and demanding and had the force of a tornado--a whirlwind of ideas and opinion and of course style-The Kay Thompson character in Funny Face was lovingly modeled after Diana Vreeland-a true force, at times threatening, awesome, fearless, extravagant and utterly enchanting. 

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Mrs.  Vreeland with Richard Avedon and Dovima

Diana Vreeland invented the role of Fashion Editor with a taste for the extraordinary and the extreme- she would single handedly change fashion magazine editorial taking her readers to far away lands, bringing them romance, fantasy and great style within the pages of the layouts that told would tell stories.  These featured  editorial pieces were done with no care for expense and shot by amazing and now legendary names -Richard Avedon, Lillian Bassman, Patrick Litchfield, David Bailey...

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Veruschka in a fur hood by Giorgio di Sant'Angelo in Vogue, July 1968.

 “I think part of my success as an editor came from never worrying about a fact, a cause, an atmosphere. It was me — projecting to the public. That was my job. I think I always had a perfectly clear view of what was possible for the public. 
GIVE ‘EM WHAT THEY NEVER KNEW THEY WANTED.”

  Creativity and curiosity oozed from every inch of her- the world was her real editorial staff  and she filled her magazines with what excited and her, what she saw as the next thing, and what she imagined the world could and should be.  Not just fashion, but politics,art,music, film, theatre literature, architecture, philosophy... presented with HER view in the pages of HER Vogue. Mrs. Vreeland's December issues were a celebration, a true feast for the eyes- everything and anything that thrilled her was included...  as always there was  fantasy and the exotic taking the readers places they would never otherwise imagine or experience without Diana Vreeland.

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Dovima with elephants by Richard Avedon, 1955

In 1947 she brought the bikini to the fashion pages-her staff was shocked and she told them "...with an attitude like that you keep civilization back a thousand years."

She loved a revolution and in the 1960s she had one to embrace and celebrate in the pages of Vogue  She brought the look and energy of the streets of London where she saw the future of style taking shape-Twiggy, Mick Jagger... the "youthquake" influence of music and film, photographers and models--the 60s for her were like the twenties of her own youth had been- an upheaval in society and she brought the new  global influence to her pages seeing style and fashion in all of it.

 

 “Vogue always did stand for people’s lives. I mean, a new dress doesn’t get you anywhere; it’s the life you’re living in the dress, and the sort of life you had lived before, 
and what you will do in it later."

Blackglama Mink "What Becomes A Legend Most" Ad Campaign (1977)

 "You gotta have style. It helps you get down the stairs. It helps you get up in the morning. It's a way of life. Without it, you're nobody."

 At the age of 70 Vogue let her go-she was lost  and depressed without the  all encompassing world she had left and then she  received a call to become a consultant at The Metropolitan Musuem of art-her friends raied the funds for her work at the Costume Institute.  There  she breathed energy and life into the dusty  archives as she shocked the curators who looked on with horror while Mrs Vreeland  yanked and tossed fragile costume pieces everywhere as if they were contact sheets she was organizing for a magazine spread-she brought  her editorial eye to the rooms of The Met and not for the first time pushed a few noses out of joint.  She created "layouts" at the museum displaying the costume and fashion pieces in ways to tell stories but now those stories were live.   The "show" was the thing,  fashion history was now an event and accessible.  She removed the stuffiness and the academia, and maybe even some of the accuracy, and opened the doors to the fantasy and magic of history.  Once again, as it had been in her magazine years, it was all about the story and the vision -the romance the intrigue...--Diana Vreeland editorialized the Met's collections and brought them to life as she brought people through the doors who may have never entered the museum before and certainly not with the interest and expectation that a Diana Vreeland exhibit held. In doing so she raised fashion design to art, celebrating designers which now museums all over the world do, but her exhibit of Yves Saint Laurent's work was the first to do so.

 
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" I believe in the dream... I believe we only live through our dreams and our imagination that is the only reality we ever really know."

Diana Vreeland-the Eye has to Travel  is now available on DVD and there is a companion book -it is a wonderful celebration of a woman who was truly one of a kind, a woman who would changed not only fashion publishing, but also the definition of style.   The film is filled with colorful imaginative stories from her sons,designers, photographers, her staff, collaborators and Mrs. Vreeland herself in interviews with Jane Pauley, Dick Cavett, Diane Sawyer and George Plimpton who she chose to edit her memoir ...many of the stories may have been "embellished" but coming from the Empress Vreeland -who cares!  Such fun!

 “To be contented—that’s for the cows.”